


Remember My Love (& Fitz Remembers)

by AryaGEN



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-15 21:26:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10557954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AryaGEN/pseuds/AryaGEN
Summary: Part 1: Daisy and Jemma are captured and try to reason with framework Fitz to escape.Part 2: Back home, Jemma and Fitz work through the memories of his life inside the framework (TW)Everything ends well, Spoilers 4x16.





	1. Chapter 1

They never made it to the resistance, not even close.

 

Daisy’s heart pounded in her chest as she struggled desperately at the fastenings that held her in the doctor’s testing chamber. Beyond the containment material and reinforced glass Fitz’s cold eyes seemed to watch impassively while his machine went through basic calibrations. Of course Fitz was far from impassive; his head was cycling through emotions – the curiosity of new discovery, hatred and vengeance and anger that the new subject had been a mole and nearly threatened everything they had worked for. This time, for the first time, there was something beyond that – something that came akin to guilt.

 

“Fitz!” Daisy screamed again, her throat hoarse and desperately trying to get through to her former friend. “Fitz please stop, you have to listen to me – this isn’t real. None of this is real!”

 

His lips quirked into a thin smile, “I can assure you that everything you see, everything you are about to _feel –_ it’s quite real, Skye.” He paused briefly as his eyes flashed menacingly – it made Daisy feel sick.

 

“It’s code Fitz – you should know you wrote it!” She pleaded, shocked when this seemed to prompt a laugh out her imprisoner.

 

“Then I guess you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he mocked coldly, typing into the computer that controlled the machine, “if it’s all just code.”

 

“Fitz.” Daisy panicked as the arms of Fitz’s device were positioned above her shaking frame. Each breath seemed to come in shorter and shallower. Despite all her training she couldn’t stop the panic that began to set in – not just at what was about to happen, but that it was Fitz responsible for it – that he seemed to be revelling in it. “Fitz, stop. I can’t.”

 

When he spoke his voice was harder than she’d ever heard it yet somehow still detached and mannered like everything else he’d said since she had entered the Framework. “You are one of _them,_ after everything – you betrayed us.” His dispassionate demeanour rendered him almost unrecognisable from the Fitz she had grown to care for. “There’s something very wrong with you.”

 

She flinched as the very man who had convinced her being an inhuman was okay spoke so callously, she felt herself deflate, hopeless. “What are you going to do with Jemma?”

 

His eyes seemed to crawl over her as he recognised the clear signs of resignation: some of his subjects understood what was going to happen faster than others; there was no point in fighting it – they all gave up eventually. “That’s none of your concern.”

 

“If you do this you can’t go back,” Daisy warned, her tears cold against her cheeks, “This isn’t you – you are brave, the bravest man I’ve ever met; you’re kind and good and you are loyal to a fault and if you do this you won’t ever forgive yourself. If you do this, you can’t ever wake up.”

 

“You aren’t the first subject I’ve put in this machine – you should know that, and you’ll not be the last.” Fitz said – Daisy couldn’t be sure but she swore he looked slightly curious.

 

“I am the first.” She said quietly, “I am the first _real_ thing in this thing, this world’s not real Fitz – but I am, I’m real. You have to remember me.”

 

His brow furrowed slightly, “I remember exactly who you are _Skye_ , and soon I’ll know what you can become.”

 

Daisy smiled sadly, “That’s not my name.”

 

Fitz’s jaw clenched as he felt the level of her betrayal not just to Hydra but to him personally. He had taken a liking to her – far more than most under his command. “I suppose it wouldn’t be.”

 

The machine whirred into life and began lining up with her joints; she could see the tips of the needles getting ready to pierce her. She closed her eyes for a moment and prepared what could very well be her last words – nobody knew exactly what happened to the inhumans after the procedure but she knew enough about Hydra to know their promise of relocation was bullshit.

 

“I forgive you.” Her words rang loudly in the room, “This isn’t your fault. If you get out of this, it’s okay. Just… don’t tell Jemma it was you who did it, promise me you’ll never tell her.” She opened her eyes again and saw him looking back at her with an odd expression, the needles pressed against her skin, “Promise me you won’t tell Simmons!”

 

She felt a flare of pain but it only lasted a moment, the needles retracted almost immediately as Fitz pressed his hand against the glass and practically shouted, “Who the fuck are you?” His unusual smoothness replaced by the thick Scottish brogue she’d come to associate with his anger. “Jemma Simmons?” He spat out at her as though daring her to counter him. “Jemma Simmons is dead.”

 

“She’s not dead - she was with me when we were captured!” Daisy shot back.

 

“Jemma Simmons has been dead for years; I saw it happen! It’s because of her that we’re even here!” His voice was fiery and although she should’ve felt more threatened it was oddly warming to see Fitz emoting.

 

“We came here to save you, to save all of our friends but if you don’t believe me then send one of your men to check.” Daisy challenged him, watching Fitz struggling and failing to appear calm and collected.

 

Fitz hesitated before turning to one of the guards in the room and barking an order to bring the prisoner to them. Daisy watched as he walked away from the glass and picked a strange looking handgun up from his desk draw, “If you’re playing games… if it’s anyone other than Jemma Simmons – I’m going to kill them in front of you and then I am going to kill you.”

 

“It is her.” Daisy told him confidently as an awkward silence fell between them.

 

The silence was broken by the landline phone ringing on his desk. Fitz walked over to it and, still holding the gun, carefully swept his hair back into position and took a breath before answering in a clinical manner. “You’re sure? … Bring her up … the Director needn’t worry, I’ll take over from here.”

 

Daisy watched him carefully as he hung up the phone and leant against his desk sighing deeply. After a few moments Fitz’s gaze shot straight to hers but he seemed different – he was neither the Fitz she knew nor the doctor. “You knew Simmons well?” She was weary at pushing her luck but maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t a lost cause – if Coulson could remember she hoped Fitz could too.

 

“I watched her die.” He said coldly, “If she’s back… if she’s one of _you._ She… _”_ He stopped seemingly remembering he was talking to one of his subjects and turned away.

 

It was several minutes before the guards came through the doors, pushing Jemma harshly to the floor. Daisy wished Simmons wouldn’t have to witness what was going on – her arms and shoulders were still bleeding from the machine and what with an unhinged Fitz holding a gun her heart broke for her friend. Jemma struggled to her feet and froze when she saw Fitz; for a moment Daisy could’ve sworn she was about to crush him in a tight hug until Simmons’ face darkened in revulsion as she took in her surroundings. Fitz for his part seemed rooted to the spot.

 

“How?” He asked quietly, unsure.

 

Jemma opened her mouth to answer but instead of words she choked out a sob at the man in front of her. In the end she simply asked, “What’ve they done to you Fitz?”

 

Flinching he cocked the gun still hanging limply at his side before asking in a harder tone, “You’re one of them… an _inhuman_?”

 

Jemma shook her head and quickly answered, “No Fitz I’m not I promise.”

 

“I watched you die.” He growled and raised the gun at her, hand trembling.

 

“I did die Fitz, or at least one version of me did–” She began but he cut her off.

 

“That’s your power is it? To what, clone yourself?” He spat, horror writ across his face.

 

“I’m not an inhuman Fitz!” She pleaded, her voice cracking again as it became clear he didn’t believe her.

 

Any attempt to appear the ordered and well-groomed man he seemed to be in the framework vanished as Fitz roared out in anger, “I didn’t want this Jemma – this was your dream.” He gestured towards the machine Daisy was fastened into, “I finished it for you, in your memory and you were one of them all along.”

 

“Fitz what are you talking about?” Jemma ‘s head seemed to spin around her as she fought of the ever-present panic she’d felt ever since she entered what felt like her personal version of hell.

 

“The Cambridge Incident? Inhumans! You called them a plague – said that they needed to be _eradicated_. And then when you, when you were killed… This was for you.” He looked again at the machine this time solemnly. When he turned back to her he had regained much of his former stoicism.

 

“How did I die here Fitz?”  Jemma asked, her stomach twisting in knots at the revelation that this whole twisted existence was somehow a dedication to the ghost of herself. She had said those words in the real world; she had been so frightened and angry after Trip’s death.

 

“The Academy… we were, we were working on the first design of this together.” He couldn’t hold her gaze. It seemed odd that the man who just minutes ago had radiated control sheer terror to all around him could now seem so weak and emotionally unbalanced. “There was so much crossfire – Hydra and Shield – I don’t know which side did it, only that it happened.”

 

“It wasn’t real Fitz, none of this is – you can leave and go back to our world: the world where we’re together, it’s not perfect but we’re together. I love you.” His eyes flew to finally meet hers and she could see a battle raging in his head. On some level his memories had begun returning but it had taken Coulson hours to even begin to deal with the emotion of having lived a lie – she couldn’t imagine the torment Fitz was going through weighing his real life with his actions in the framework.

 

He lowered the gun and dismissed the guards from the room seemingly not noticing the tears streaming down his face. His whole life was crashing down around him as impossible images flickered into his mind of the woman in front of him falling through the air, rushing through some kind of underground temple, stranded on a desert under two moons and kissing him on the floor in some familiar yet dingy room. He dropped the gun on the floor as his legs gave out under him.

 

“Fitz?” Jemma asked cautiously, shooting Daisy a quick glance which she hoped was reassuring. “Fitz?” She repeated, kneeling down next to him.

 

“It was my father – I promised him I wouldn’t go into the field…” Fitz looked up at Jemma, “He wasn’t real was he?”

 

“Fitz, nothing you’ve done here is – this isn’t your fault.” She put her hand on his shoulder but he recoiled away.

 

“But I remember everything! Every subject… every person I’ve put into this, this monstrous invention!” He rose to his feet and hit a button on the computer that released the straps on Daisy and unlocked the door.

 

Daisy rushed over to Fitz and Jemma but as she neared Fitz once again backed as far away from either of them as he could. “You have to go! Madame – the director, AIDA, she won’t stop until threats to the framework are eliminated, she…” He looked like he was going to be sick, “it’s my fault isn’t it, all of this. I’m the bad guy.”

 

“Listen Fitz,” Daisy said sternly while grabbing his shoulder, “We have to get out of here – all of us, if it’s AIDA protecting this place in both worlds we don’t have long until we’re discovered. You can feel shitty about all the horrible things you haven’t done later but right now we need you to focus!”

 

As if on cue alarm lighting switched on – Daisy rushed to the door with Fitz’s dropped gun and stood ready while Jemma closed the gap between herself and Fitz, putting her hands on his face and forcing him to look at her. Seeing the recognition in his eyes even among the complete turmoil of everything else, she leant in to kiss him. When he pulled away again sharply she repeated, “It’s okay Fitz, it’s okay…” until he finally stopped trying to get away from her.

 

The sound of a gunshot forced them both into action as Daisy fired a warning down the corridor – it wouldn’t buy them much more than a couple of minutes. Jemma held onto Fitz tightly for just a moment before pulling away and telling him, “Fitz we need to know where you are in the real world and I need you to write us another backdoor. _Everything_ that is not escaping or rescue can wait – I can’t imagine what you’re thinking, I don’t know what to make of any of this – there’ll be a time to talk it through but that’s not now. I need you to do this Fitz.”

 

He stared at her for a few moments before nodding silently and sitting at his desk. He didn’t fully understand how he knew to edit the framework so quickly; even though he objectively knew that he had written the code his most recent memories were more powerful than the new ones. If it hadn’t been for Jemma kneeling next to him and holding his arm to remind him what was real and what wasn’t he almost would’ve tried to contact the Strike team commander. His instincts and feelings weren’t matched – the only thing that made sense in both lives was that Jemma Simmons meant something to him but even now he could feel the terror that he wouldn’t be able to hold onto reality once she was gone.

 

“It’s done.” He muttered as Daisy backed into the room from the doorway.

 

“Good because I’m out of bullets.” Daisy shouted as she locked the door, hoping it’d slow them down another few seconds.

 

Jemma stared into Fitz’s eyes as she told him firmly, “We’re going to get you Fitz; I’ll see you in our world very soon.” She pressed a kiss to his lips before breaking apart.

 

“My memories… they’re…” Fitz began with tears streaming down his face. “Without you here I can’t, what if I can’t hold on?” He turned to Daisy in tears and burst out, “I’m so sorry Daisy.”

 

As Daisy ran up to him she put her hand on his arm, “I told you, it’s okay Fitz – Coulson had the same. We’ll find you and fix this.”

 

Fitz screwed up his face in concentration as he stepped back towards the computer – he had only to hit enter and his friends would disappear in front of his very eyes. “I… I don’t want to forget…”

 

Jemma pulled her old Shield ID out of her pocket and put it into his hand, “Maybe you won’t. Hold onto this and remember how much I love you.”

 

“How can... after all this, after what I’ve done and become? After what I am… How?” Fitz stammered, trying to stop himself from breaking down completely.

 

“Ward’s here and is fighting on the good side; nothing he does here changes all the horrific things he did in the real world. Coulson and May, they’re both just as trapped as you are – you didn’t choose this. You’re here for us now, and we’ll be here for you.” Jemma answered, trembling as she looked at him and readied herself to say goodbye.

 

Daisy patted him on the shoulder and said kindly, “Don’t think too hard on it, there’s literally something wrong with the data in your head.” He almost laughed but the memory of him trying to use the machine on her was haunting his every thought.

 

A flash at the door triggered Fitz into hitting the button on the computer – in the moment it took for the Strike team to enter his office Jemma and Daisy had vanished before him. He slipped Jemma’s card into his pocket as Madame Hydra strolled in behind her officers.

 

“What happened?” She asked commandingly but, seeing Fitz flinch and step away, her tone softened and she sauntered closer in a way he guessed was designed to seduce him.

 

“I think the other one’s an inhuman – she broke free, did something to my computer and teleported them both away – we’ve got to find them!” He said in as powerful tone as he could muster.

 

She looked at him seemingly unconvinced before turning to the assembled Strike team and ordering their Captain to make it a top priority. She left Fitz sitting at his desk offering to send up a new inhuman for testing, he simply said he needed rest all the while squeezing Jemma’s ID in his pocket until it drew blood. If for whatever reason they had to return to the framework before they could find his location he was determined they’d have an ally ready – he would make himself a good man in both worlds.

 

As Jemma and Daisy woke up on the Zephyr they found the coordinates embedded in the same code he’d used to get them out along with the message _I’m sorry._


	2. The Real World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma helps Fitz to work through the trauma of his life in the framework.  
> Trigger warning: Fitz has suicidal thoughts.  
> Positive ending.

By the time Jemma and Daisy pulled Fitz out of the framework his nerves were shot – holding onto his life outside the framework was proving increasingly difficult; everything about the environment he was in was designed to lure and appeal him into staying. Madame Hydra was watching him closely after he turned away her advances that evening citing once again his stressful day – it would have been so easy to go back to her; she made him feel powerful and powerless at once and his memories with Jemma were faded and disordered. Even staring at the photo on her ID he struggled to remember what his version of her looked like – he could only remember Daisy by his memories within the framework.

 

When they brought a teenager into the machine, some nervous pale boy named Chris Adler, he knew he had to leave Hydra: not because he couldn’t face the thought of torturing him, but because some sick part of him wanted to continue his work. He tried to reason with himself that none of it was real; that as Chris screamed in pain it was just errant coding, nobody was getting hurt and yet he couldn’t shake the sense that he needed to get out. It had been the hardest decision he’d made but uploading the notes of Chris’ experiment and the many thousands like it to expose the inhuman programme had forced him into fleeing but not before he sabotaged his own work on the way out.

 

He’d been found quickly by Hydra’s Agent Ward and, although he had a deep felt belief he shouldn’t trust him for reasons he didn’t understand, he was taken to meet the Resistance operating from an off the books secret Shield base called the Playground. He was thrown into an underground cell almost the moment he arrived; it took days before they seemed comfortable enough with his defection to let him have a room and even then he was watched at all times. One of the British soldiers, a man in his mid-30s, seemed desperate to kill for his crimes – regularly warning the others that accepting ex-Nazis into Shield is how the whole nightmare regime started.

 

Oddly, walking down the halls helped him to try and hold on to what little remained of his past life’s thoughts: he kept circling back to the science lab and found some sense of peace working there. As he finished developing a handheld laser generator that would cut through walls he mused that it was little wonder the Resistance was so weak when their technology was so far outstripped by Hydra’s. None of his captors trusted him – he could hardly blame them, he barely trusted himself. It was until he had a new memory that he was even sure he’d made the right choice helping them; him and Simmons had kissed in the lab – at the time he’d been furious and hurt and hopeless and then they’d kissed and it seemed to fill him with peace in a way he’d never experienced in this world. Here his life had always been somehow empty.

 

When Simmons pulled him out and the lure of the framework was gone his mind cleared almost immediately as his life flooded back to him. And Jemma Simmons – his beautiful, brave and brilliant girlfriend – was looking at him with such joy that he felt himself completely caged in. The tortured screams of everyone he’d thrown into the machine rang in his ears and as she leaned in to kiss him he knew he was going to be sick. He had no idea where he was only that he was underground but as he tried to pull away and go anywhere that wasn’t surrounded by Simmons and his team he tripped over his own feet. Some part of him recognised that Jemma was explaining disorientation was normal but the rest of him needed to get away to sprint, to feel fresh air and to be utterly and totally alone.

 

When Jemma’s hand came down on his back his whole body seized involuntarily and he scrambled away from her into the nearest corner of the room. Pressing his forehead against the walls he could remember everything he’d done playing over and over in his mind; the weaponry he’d built, the testing, his relationship with Madame Hydra. He let out a strangled sob and curled into a tight ball, breaths coming out in ragged gasps as he remembered his enthusiastic part in crimes against humanity. He was increasingly lightheaded and as the image of Chris Adler came to mind – a boy he did nothing to help because even then he’d thought of him as less than human – he threw up onto the concrete floor, retching painfully.

 

He didn’t feel the needle go into his arm that sedated him but when he woke up he was in the room he shared with Jemma at the Playground. She was sitting in the corner of the room as far away from him as possible, eyes closed as she lightly slept. His own gaze passed over the comfy underground home they’d made together in this world and the screams returned with his guilt and self-loathing, his panic surged through him in waves. On the wall the pictures of him and Simmons together served as a reminder of everything he didn’t deserve, everything he’d already lost. The sight of Jemma sleeping peacefully in the corner caused fresh tears to spill down his cheeks as he knew what he had to do – he wouldn’t live a monster, he wouldn’t expose her to his own evil.

 

He quietly reached into the bedside cabinet and, below his clothes, he felt for Jemma’s shiv: the sharpened wooden stake she’d bought back from the other planet. He hadn’t told her that he’d kept it; he turned it over in his hands and wondered if it would have been better had he never returned from the planet; if he had stayed there when the portal closed. He’d promised he wouldn’t let the evil come through to earth and he’d failed twice over. He had hurt her – he didn’t even know how much but he had built the virtual world, he had made LMDs and all of it, all of it was his fault. He wasn’t strong enough to stop loving her, but he was strong enough to leave – _one way or another._

He pressed the sharpened point into the top of his arm and stole one look at Jemma; he was startled by the fact she was awake and clearly watching him now.

 

“Fitz.” She said sadly as she worked out what he had planning on doing.

 

A long silence followed where neither knew what to do or say; to some extent they didn’t need words. Jemma knew what he had done in there and even if it wasn’t actually real it had been real to him – she had guessed from the moment he tried to run away from her that healing would be a difficult, lengthy process for both of them. Silent tears streaked her face as she looked at a sight more terrifying to her than any version of Fitz she’d ever seen before: more so than his LMD, ‘the doctor’ or him in those early days after he woke up with aphasia.

 

 “How are the others?” Fitz asked quietly, breaking the silence… “Is everyone…” He couldn’t seem to answer the question.

 

“They’re alive.” Jemma answered not dropping her eyes from his, “Mack lost his daughter.”

 

A shiver ran through Fitz on the bed as a fresh wave of guilt and pain hit him. He looked down at his arm where the tip rested against his skin. “It’s my fault.” He mumbled, exhausted.

 

“We don’t blame you.” Simmons said calmly, she was holding very still as if afraid of what even a small movement would trigger in him. “I don’t.”

 

“Yeah well you should.” Fitz choked out shaking.

 

Jemma’s face furrowed in concentration before she very carefully and slowly stood up from her chair and took a step towards the bed. Fitz instinctively scrambled backwards, knocking the bedside lamp from the table and causing a sound that made them both jump. He dropped the shiv in surprise and brought his hands around his knees crying in the foetal position. Jemma sat on the edge of the bed close enough to touch him if she reached out her arm but far enough to give him space.

 

“I’m here Fitz,” Jemma said, “and so is everyone else.” When he didn’t respond or look up at her she continued, “Nothing’s been done that can’t be undone.”

 

Fitz was silent for a few moments before eventually whispering in a tortured voice, “I can still hear them.”

 

Jemma reached out, her hand ghosting above his arm as if to ask permission to rest there, when he didn’t shy away this time she gently touched him. “We’ll get through this.”

 

Fitz shuddered as a fresh sob slipped through, “How can you know that?”

 

“I…” Jemma started but struggled to find the words before finishing lamely, “I don’t… but I’d like to try… _together_?”

 

“I don’t want to get through this Jemma,” he quietened for a while before adding, “I don’t deserve to.”

 

“It wasn’t real Fitz.” Jemma tried to assure him but he brought his eyes up to hers defiantly.

 

“It was real to me!” He practically shouted, “I remember all of it – everything I did, everyone I hurt! And you... I hurt you…”

 

She tightened her grip on his arms and said resignedly, “I don’t know how to help you Fitz, I’m here, I love you, tell me how I can help?”

 

Fitz was silent as he retreated back into the foetal position unable to give her an answer, she ended up lying down near to him hand still on his arm resigned to stay by his side until he was ready to talk more. At some point Daisy quietly opened the door to shoot her a reassuring smile and offer her and Fitz something to eat but Jemma wordlessly shook her hood and she left them to it. Fitz’s exhaustion began to take its toll as he rolled onto his side and faced away from her, his movement made holding her arm on his uncomfortable but she refused to move it in case he regressed.

 

When the pain in her arm became unmanageable she asked quietly, unsure if he’d fallen asleep, “Do you want me to leave Fitz?”

 

Her heart thumped against her chest as she waited for his answer and when he finally shook his head she almost let out a loud sigh of relief. She rolled closer to him and snaked her other arm around his stomach in a very loose hug, he automatically moved back towards her to close the gap a little as she just held him as she let her tiredness guide them both to sleep.

 

She woke up to find the bed empty.

 

Panicking she bolted upright and cursed herself for drifting off – her mind flashed back to the image of Fitz with her shiv and she felt her head cloud over in deep rooted panic. She found their joining bathroom empty and flew to the door running into the corridor with bare feet. Without thinking she sprinted to the kitchen hoping to find him there but instead she found a very tired looking Daisy sitting next to a very puffy eyed Mack. The two of them took in her breathless appearance but Jemma had already turned to leave before either could comment.

 

She found him in their lab sitting with his head in his hands. He was staring at a flame heating a bottle of colourless liquid.

 

“Jemma?” He asked, looking surprised to see her. His face was blotchy but he wasn’t crying.

 

“Fitz where’ve you been?” She asked quickly, the panic still evident in her voice.

 

His eyes seemed to catch her worried expression and he jumped to his feet, “Jemma I’m sorry!” He hastily exclaimed before adding, “I didn’t… I didn’t want to wake you and I needed to think.” When she didn’t say anything back he finished, “I should’ve said…”

 

She breathed in and out slowly until she felt her heartrate dropping; her immediate worry of him doing something reckless subsided until she caught sight of the Bunsen burner he’d lit to boil something. “What are you, what are you up to?” She asked, trying and failing to sound casual.

 

Fitz looked embarrassed and mumbled, “I’m… It’s just water – I wanted tea so I went to the kitchen but–”

 

“–But Daisy and Mack were there.” She finished for him and he nodded sheepishly.

 

“I couldn’t.” He started but then stopped, unwilling to go on further.

 

“There should still be some tea bags in the cupboard.” She said mainly to stop them falling into silence again, she wondered if she should joke about hiding them there from when Hunter was around but the moment was gone and he’d turned away.

 

He idly poured them both a cup and then sat down on one of the chairs taking a sip. She stood pretending to look at a nearby computer screen so that he wouldn’t think she was smothering him when he said suddenly. “That’s where I kissed you.”

 

She looked at him quizzically, “Fitz?”

 

“In the framework, it was… it was really hard to remember you once you left. That’s the only thing I could remember – kissing you, right there.” He said clearly replaying the memory in his mind.

 

“They told me what you did after we left Fitz.” Jemma said reassuringly, trying to remind him that his final days in the framework turned the war on Hydra.

 

“It doesn’t matter.” Fitz said curtly, finishing the dregs of his tea and turning away.

 

“It matters to me,” She shot back, “Me and Daisy both felt the lure… May was as much Hydra as you and Coulson, Coulson taught Nazi propaganda and handed over children to them. We felt the pull of the framework and we were barely in there, you choosing to resist – to fight it. It matters Fitz… of course it matters.”

 

He didn’t argue with her, she expected he was too exhausted to try. Instead she slowly walked towards him and held his hand as he walked around the lab like he had for her when they got back from the other planet. It was a small gesture but she didn’t know what else to do. They idly wandered up and down the desks of the lab in companionable silence for almost fifteen minutes before Fitz burst into tears again. This time she held him close to her and whispered encouragements into his ear until it stopped. It was only as they left the lab she realised how lucky she was not to have cut her feet on the broken glass still not cleaned up from her and Daisy’s escape of the Playground.

 

They ran into Mack in the corridor on the way back to their room and, after a tense moment where she wasn’t sure how Fitz would react, she watched as he stepped forward and hugged his friend. Fitz mumbled that he was sorry again and again into Mack’s chest.

 

“Hey turbo… it’s alright,” Mack said softly, “It’s alright…” For Mack, as awful as being told he would have to lose his daughter had been, the framework had also given him the chance to see his girl grow up. The man felt guilty for being the only one other than Mace truly happy in the framework.

 

Simmons hung back to give the two some space, catching sight of Daisy doing much the same. They smiled meekly at each other through their own emotional fatigue and all too soon the group parted ways.

 

Back in the room again Fitz sat down on their bed and leant against Simmons, breaking in and out of tears and sleep. At some point in the middle of the night they were both awake after a nightmare he was in the framework and she was dead again – she didn’t tell him about her own nightmares, he needed time to work through his own first.

 

“I don’t know how to help you.” Simmons said again, holding him as she felt him press his face against her now wet shoulder.

 

His reply was muffled but gave her some small sense of hope on what would be a long road to healing, “You already are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, hope you enjoyed it - I wanted to play out how Fitz's initial reaction to waking up might look and mirror it a bit with Jemma's return from the other planet. It's rough that here she has to put aside all her own emotion to help him like he did post 3x05 but I think it's what she'd do. If you have the chance please review, it's great to hear what people think particularly about stories that handle more emotionally difficult material like this chapter. Thanks all!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Hope you enjoyed it - it's been a long time since I've written anything and I'd love to know what you think of it. For those wondering I'll be working on any unfinished stories over the summer - this was just something I wanted to jot down and to get back into the flow of writing before continuing any of the longer projects :)


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